NamPost and KfW Development Bank have signed an agreement for a concessional loan of US$22.11mn to provide micro-loans to micro, small and medium-sized companies and households in rural and remote areas via NamPost subsidiary PostFin
Due to the footprint of NamPost’s branch network, beneficiaries can be reached across the country. By enabling PostFin to expand its loan book over the medium term, the funding supports poverty reduction and social progression; adequate financial products and access to finance create an enabling environment especially for micro and small entrepreneurs in the formal and informal sector.
The funds provided within the German development cooperation aim at extending the respective access to finance for up to 28,000 households and micro, small and medium enterprises, with a special focus on women and disadvantaged persons. The agreement will be backed by a sovereign guarantee.
At the signing ceremony, KfW Windhoek outgoing Office Director, Dr Uwe Stoll emphasised, “NamPost with its main objective to contribute to poverty reduction and social development can now more easily fulfill its part ‘to leave no one behind’.”
Gerlinde Sauer, counsellor for Development Cooperation, highlighted that the importance of access to finance for private sector development and employment creation in Namibia. The financial cooperation of KfW and NamPost is to her view an important pillar of the German support to Namibia in the field of sustainable economic development as one of the focal areas of German development cooperation. It complements technical cooperation with MITSMED and MoF to support the implementation of “Growth at Home” and “SME-Financing” strategies respectively.
NamPost CEO Festus Hangula added that the funding would provide PostFin additional leeway to further develop and refine models and options that would assist in growing the PostFin’s portfolio of projects to address financial inclusion and responsible financing.
PostFin CEO Patrick Gardiner said that PostFin has a track record of providing micro-finance to Namibians, stretching back to PostFin’s inception in 2010 and specifically serves clients in the lower income groups who are partially or fully excluded by the formal banking sector.
